“What next?” Orlando said.
“We crashed. I ran away.”
“Oh. Shit.”
“No,” Auggie said, and he forgot again that he was supposed to be imagining it from Robert’s perspective. “Wait. Hold on. I didn’t. Not right at first. Theo punched me. And then Robert came around the side of the car, and they were wrestling. And then he heard the sirens and ran off, and I grabbed the pack of cigarettes that had fallen out of my sleeve.” Auggie stopped walking. “Except they weren’t mine. They were Kools. And so they had to be Robert’s, but he said he didn’t have any smokes. That’s why he bummed one from me.”
“I thought you bummed one from him?”
“Why did he ask me for a cigarette if he had a whole pack?”
“I do that sometimes. It’s an ice breaker. I don’t even smoke.”
“But we’d already started talking,” Auggie said. “He didn’t need to break the ice. He’d stolen a sash and said he was a pledge; that was his icebreaker.”
“Augs, what are you talking about? This is some crazy shit.”
Ripping open his drawers, Auggie tossed his clothes on the floor.
“Come on, man, you’re not going to stay with this guy, right? This Theo guy? I mean, he’s trouble. He’s getting you in trouble right now.”
“Where are my cigarettes?” Auggie said, dumping out the middle drawer.
“This is the kind of stuff I was trying to protect you from.”
“Orlando, for the love of God, where are my cigarettes?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t touch them.”
Tossing clothes from the bottom drawer, Auggie let out a growl of frustration. Nothing. Were they gone? Had someone stolen them? Had someone thrown them in the trash?
“Oh,” Orlando said. “Remember when, um, we kind of had a disagreement, and you had your clothes, and—”
“What are you talking about?”
“Some of your stuff fell under the bed,” Orlando said, drawing his knees to his chest, an injured expression crossing his face again.
Dropping onto his knees, Auggie dug through the clutter. His hand closed over a plastic-wrapped package, and his heart pounded, but when he drew it out, it was a pack of Parliaments. He crawled deeper into the mess. Found the second pack of Parliaments. Then his hand closed over a small cardboard package. He sat back on his heels, staring at the Kools, and then he opened it. No cigarettes. The flash drive lay at the bottom of the pack.
Auggie grabbed his coat, not pausing to change into warmer clothes, and sprinted toward the stairs. Behind him, Orlando was calling his name. Auggie ignored him, pulling the phone from his pocket. He had two very important calls to make.
20
The knock at the door roused Theo from the haze of pain. At some point in one of the beatings that Jessica had administered, he had tried to crawl onto the couch. He wasn’t sure now why it had seemed like a good idea—he guessed it was animal instinct, a need to get away, get to higher ground—but he had only made it halfway. He knelt there, his torso supported on the cushions, his hands still taped behind his back. One eye was swollen shut, and there was a ringing in his right ear that faded and grew more intense in waves. She had used the cane on him until she had broken it, and then she had found the broom and used that. And at some point, she had called Auggie.
Please, Theo thought, please don’t let Auggie come.
Jessica’s footsteps clipped across the room, and the door opened.
“I’ve got it,” Auggie said.
Theo moaned and tried to tell Auggie to run, but he couldn’t get the word to take shape.
“Good job,” Jessica said. “Let’s have it, and then fuck off.”
Instead, though, Auggie’s steps moved into the house, and the door swung shut. Auggie gave a sharp intake of breath, and the steps hurried toward Theo before stopping abruptly.
“I know you want to play with your jerkoff buddy,” Jessica said, “but I’ll put four inches of this Bowie knife in your gut if you try to get any closer. Flash drive. Now.”
“What the fuck did you do to him?”
“He wasn’t playing along,” Jessica said. “Give me the flash drive.”
“Theo?” Auggie called. “Theo, are you ok?”
“Ok,” Theo managed to mumble.
“Give me the drive,” Jessica said.
“Not yet,” Auggie said.
Groaning, Theo tried to stand. Pain crackled in his hip and lanced down to his knee. He flopped back down onto the cushion.
“You’re a dumb shit,” Jessica said. “Why shouldn’t I just cut you open and take it?”
“I didn’t say I wouldn’t give it to you. I just want some answers first.”
“Well, aren’t you a regular Hardy boy?”
“Why did you and Robert agree to help Chan ruin me?”
A beat passed, and Jessica said, “What?”
“Why did you take the job to humiliate me? I know she was going to pay you, and it was a lot of money, but that’s some pretty low-down work.”
Jessica’s answer was too stilted. “Money is money.”
“Oh my God,” Auggie said. “You didn’t even know.”
“I knew.” Then Jessica shifted her weight. “What are you talking about?”
“You didn’t know about the ten thousand dollars Chan paid Robert. Oh my God. You were just . . . you were just his sidekick. What’d he do? Tell you it was one of those fifty-dollars-a-night shitty acting jobs? You missed out on ten thousand dollars because you were too fucking stupid to pay attention to what was going on.”
“I’m not stupid,” Jessica shouted. “Robert, he was the fucking retard. Who had the idea to blackmail that motherfucker Lender? Me. Who had the idea to string along the Ozark Volunteers, squeezing them for cash and promising them the recording, as if those dumb fucks would have any idea what to do with it if they ever got it? Me.
